Anyway when I was a wee little shaver, we didn’t have VCRs or Tivo or even Cable TV so TV shows that aired rarely were BIG events.
My question to you is what was a BIG TV event when you were a kid?
For me it was, the Wizard of Oz. Also How The Grinch Stole Christmas and a Charlie Brown Christmas were also big. If you missed those you had to wait a WHOLE year.
And not just a regular year but a KID year which is longer than 365 days, or at least seems that way.
Also Miss America was pretty big in my household as were the Grammy and Emmy Awards. (My family didn’t go to movies much so the Oscars weren’t a big deal).
I remember for those special TV events you had to have special junk food, like Red Hot Potato Chips or Nacho Cheese Doritos and Hawaiian Punch, or Dolly Madison Snack Cakes in case of a Charlie Brown Christmas.
So what were big TV events in your household, “back in the day”?
Definitely the Grinch and Charlie Brown - also Rudolph and Frosty the Snowman.
It seems to me like the broadcast of “Roots” was a big deal, too, which is why it was so funny when, on “That 70’s Show,” Kitty got so mad at Red when he managed to screw up the brand-new VCR so they missed it.
I was born at the dawn of the VCR age (we didn’t get one until 1988), so to me it was still a big deal when they ran feature films on network TV. I remember getting pretty excited when they showed the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. I actually cried one year when I had to miss Superman II, because a storm had knocked out the station’s transmitter.
I’d also get pretty excited when one of the big three (for years we didn’t have cable either) showed Star Wars.
Just to make everyone feel old: the final episode of Seinfeld. I was seven, my whole extended family (grandparents, aunts etc.) came over, it was a massive deal. Never before or since have we actually gathered to watch something on TV like that - there would be times when we’d all be sitting there watching something (one of the big episodes of Australian drama Blue Heelers comes to mind) but that’s because we all happened to be together for dinner or whatever. Seinfeld finale was pre-organised, important, serious business.
I was born in 1980, 4 siblings followed so most of the “big events” that you mentioned, mom recorded. In fact, to this day, my sisters (who still live at home) will pull out those old tapes and watch them from time to time, compete with vintage 1985 commercials (for Chic Jeans).
Born in 1971. Like you noted, Wizard of Oz was huge. Anything that followed the CBS Special Presentation blurb, usually Charlie Brown or a Rankin/Bass Christmas special.
“North and South,” the civil war mini series based on a novel.
Also I remember the first time they showed “Top Gun” on TV, it was a big honkin deal (I knew a few people with VCRs, but they weren’t very common yet).
(Sidetrack: These days, every night is Jeopardy! I rarely watch, but my parents tune in every night, in the next town over, and I sometimes tweak them by texting the answer to Final [when I can get it right].)
Long before VCR, most certainly Wizard of Oz. We planned our day around the show.
Also, as a kid, it was always great to stay home from school if you were sick so you could see re-runs of I Love Lucy.
Then of course there was the JFK assassination where all three (the only three) stations carried nothing but that news for three solid days, and I happened to be watching when Ruby was shot. Wonder if that was the only live shot of a murder on TV? Hmm…
Not so much films or series but my whole family watching as an event are - The first space shuttle launch & landing; The BBC showing the full Thriller video.
Still at my folks The Queen’s Christmas speech, every Christmas Day at 3pm.
Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953, and an atom bomb test at around that same time.
For my family, it was The Ten Commandments at Easter time. It was my late husband’s favorite movie. Later it was the premiere of the Thriller video. Didn’t MTV show it all day long?
The miniseries of Rich Man, Poor Man was a big deal. We rescheduled scout troop meetings so the scout leaders wouldn’t miss it.
Even though I can’t remember it at all, not the teams, not the venue, whether college or pro, I would think that whenever I saw my first football game on TV it would have been an event. I saw some baseball games, but remember even less about them.
Can anybody identify the first televised football game in the USA? When, which network, which teams?
